


Sum Up

by Viridian5



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Canon - Manga, Drama, M/M, Missing Scene, Putting It Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 23:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6350308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that the group is reunited, it’s time to gather their information together and decide on their next moves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sum Up

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _Saiyuki Reload_ volumes 6-10 and slighter ones for _Saiyuki_ volumes 7-9. 
> 
> Sensei still hasn’t presented an official version of the immediate aftermath of the battle with Ukoku Sanzo, so.... 
> 
> Thanks to Akira 17 for beta.

Sanzo had been asleep for three days. Although he needed the rest to recover from his injuries, the three of them needed him awake so they could move on. Gojyo and especially Goku were nearly bouncing off the walls from all their pent-up energy, while Hakkai felt curiosity eating at him as he wondered how much more Sanzo knew about Ukoku Sanzo’s machinations from all the gloating he’d no doubt been treated to during his beating. Immediately after the fight their group’s talk had been all banter, arguments, and one-upmanship to goad and keep each other awake and alive; they’d been in no shape for serious conversation. Hakkai felt certain they’d see Ukoku Sanzo again and felt the need for a kind of war council.

On this third day of waiting Hakkai had made sure to have the three of them in the hotel room with Sanzo in the hopes that listening to Gojyo and Goku carry on nearby might incite Sanzo to wakefulness through sheer irritation. It had worked before.

“Are you ever gonna forgive me for going after Kami-sama alone?” Gojyo asked.

Since Hakkai remembered all too well the desolation he’d felt when he realized that Gojyo had left that night without a word, he replied, “No.”

Gojyo sighed. “I say we rough Sanzo up a bit for running out on us. You guys kicked _me_ around for it.”

“I dare say that Ukoku Sanzo beat on Sanzo so successfully that we’re not necessary, though Goku yanking Sanzo away so hard and your failure to catch him added a nearly broken neck to the list of injuries. You have no idea how many broken bones and how much torn tissue I had to heal. Speaking of which, I’ve put a great deal of my strength and energy into healing Sanzo, so you’d be undoing my work and have to answer to _me_. You don’t want to do that.”

“We have to do _something_ to punish him. He abandoned us! I mean he abandoned Goku.” 

Oh, Gojyo. “Yet Goku understood and forgave him immediately.”

“Yeah, dickface,” Goku said, “stop pretending you’re just looking out for me while you’re making this about _your_ issues!”

“You ungrateful chimp!”

As much as he enjoyed their lively shows of spirit, he needed to corral this a bit. “Now, now,” Hakkai said, interrupting before they put themselves into an argument loop. “Gojyo, Sanzo willingly went and stayed with Hazel, a man he found creepy, off-putting, and far too interested in him, to find out who put the target on Goku.” Hakkai had figured Sanzo’s reasons out early on. “In a way, he started punishing himself that very night and continued until we found him.” Hearing that obviously made Goku feel better too, which made it even more worth it. Once Goku got past seeing Sanzo’s battle injuries, he’d probably also noticed the shadows of sleeplessness under Sanzo’s eyes and how he looked thinner than he had while he’d been with them.

“Oh, hey,” Goku said softly.

Goku had noticed that Sanzo had woken up but feigned continued sleep as he tried to get his bearings on where he was and who was around him and check to see if he still had the Maten sutra, which Hakkai had left close to him. Hakkai decided to let Sanzo determine when he officially woke up and not to alert Gojyo to it early. Sanzo was often easier to deal with in precarious situations if you left him some of his dignity. 

When Sanzo opened his eyes, Hakkai asked, “How do you feel, Sanzo?”

“Like a bag of broken glass, which is still an improvement,” Sanzo answered. “I have an idea of the extent of the injuries you had to deal with for the four of us so I’m not complaining.” With Sanzo’s easily being the worst of them. 

He still looked frailer than usual but retained the fire of his spirit in his eyes, a fire that Ukoku Sanzo had nearly smothered out, intending to break him body and soul. Shooting Ukoku in the head had done Sanzo a lot of good, even if Ukoku had dodged enough to stop it from being a kill shot.

But Sanzo being physically weaker than usual might help pry more information from him. Hakkai knew he could be a terrible person, but here it would be for the good of the team.

Goku went to the door. “I’ll order up a meal for ya. Something easy on your stomach. Be right back.” He was gone before Sanzo even had a chance to protest. Smart. 

“The words you’re looking for, Sanzo, are ‘thank you,’” Gojyo said. “Asshole.”

Gojyo goading Sanzo wouldn’t get Hakkai what he wanted. Fortunately, Goku returned before it could become a fight, saying, “They’ll bring it up when it’s ready. Sanzo, what was up with that crazy-powerful, dark Sanzo guy? What did he _want_?” Good play, Goku. It seemed that he’d been wondering too. 

From how quickly Sanzo went into it, he must have wanted to talk. “He’s behind everything, helping to revive Gyumaoh and starting up the Minus Wave because he’s bored and finds chaos and mass murder entertaining. People are just toys to him, meaningless objects to be played with and broken.”

“He’s a Sanzo,” Hakkai said. 

“He uses the Muten sutra, the power of nothingness and death. It can bury all creation under a darkness blacker than night. It... voids things.”

They’d seen some of that. Sanzo had seen even more. 

“But he doesn’t have the mark you have,” Goku said, pointing to his forehead.

“He was never accepted by Heaven or the gods.”

“Like that doesn’t sound ominous,” Gojyo muttered. 

“Nothingness....” After a moment of pondering, Goku asked, sounding upset, “Was that what he was doing to you when we showed up and I had to pull you out? Turning you into _nothing_?”

“He said he could make it so I never existed at all. He was erasing me.”

Hakkai saw the look of horror on Goku’s face. If Sanzo had never existed, Goku would still be an amnesiac locked in a lonely cave at the top of a mountain. If Sanzo had never existed, Gonou would have died. Gonou had deeply desired death, but Hakkai hadn’t been Gonou in years and he wouldn’t trade those years for anything. While there had been difficult times, he’d gained so much. Gojyo also looked bereft, but instead of seeming to be lost in some inward hellscape he directed that bereft look at Hakkai.

Oh. Hakkai didn’t quite know what to do with the feeling of warmth that gave him.

“He’s actually been working against us for a long time now,” Sanzo said. “This won’t be the last fight. Not even close.”

“It’ll be easier if we don’t have to face one of his powerful pawns at the same time,” Hakkai said.

“Hazel wasn’t the first or last one. Ukoku made Kami-sama.”

Oh. 

“So Kami-sama, the kids, all the people who got killed and their souls sucked out?” Gojyo’s voice sounded like rocks grinding together.

“Toys to him. He’s bored and wants to see what happens when he breaks things.”

“Now that you mention it, it’s obvious that Kami-sama was connected to him,” Hakkai said. “So Ukoku creates victims, some of whom make even more victims? How efficient of him.” If he felt this angry, Gojyo must be seething. 

“Yeah. Kami-sama and Hazel were both created to be twisted parodies of me and my relationship with my master.”

“So he’s another twisted stalker who’s obsessed with you?” Gojyo asked, striving to sound bored.

“Not directly with me. Obsessed with my master. He sees me as a horrible decision Koumyou Sanzo made.” Sanzo looked away from them. “A decision that got my master killed.”

“That wasn’t your fault!” Goku shouted. 

“I know.” He didn’t sound entirely certain.

Hakkai _really_ wanted to know what Ukoku Sanzo had said to Sanzo before they’d arrived. From what he’d seen, Ukoku enjoyed doling out verbal beatdowns along with physical ones and sutra attacks and he knew some of Sanzo’s most vulnerable spots. Hakkai might have to wait until he had Sanzo alone somewhere to get the full story.

Someone knocked at the door and called out, “Room service.” Goku took a tray containing a bowl of broth, a bowl of plain rice, and a cup of tea from the woman, closed the door, and set it in front of Sanzo. “Thanks,” Sanzo murmured to Goku, who beamed. 

Sanzo seemed to be eating and savoring his meal much more than usual. “This is so much better than the rich, fancy stuff Hazel kept shoving on me.”

“We wouldn’t know about that, since we had to scramble to make money to eat after you walked off with your gold card!” Gojyo said. “And were you eating off his tab the whole time so you didn’t even need the card?”

From the look on Sanzo’s face, he’d never thought about his gold card or what its absence would mean for the rest of them. Knowing it now, Sanzo looked somewhat regretful. “I wasn’t thinking very well after Goku was gunned down, which is exactly what Ukoku Sanzo wanted. When he felt that I was still too sassy during our fight, Ukoku said that he should have _killed_ Goku.”

Goku glowed a bit at hearing that, but Gojyo said, “Do you know how much trouble we went through just to eat? _We_ nearly got eaten at one village we stopped at.”

Good that Gojyo brought it up since Sanzo needed to hear this. Hakkai said, “Only youkai lived in the village. They went through the Minus Wave madness and made it out the other side to calm, but the side effect was that they saw humans as just food for them. If they hadn’t suspected that we were youkai too, we would’ve been on the menu. The whole time we were there we had to be suspicious of any meat they gave us to eat.”

“You’d think the fact that they couldn’t tell at first whether we were human or youkai would’ve made them question what a good idea eating people was but it didn’t seem to make an impression on ’em,” Goku said. 

“Did it turn into a war zone? If so, I was in the human village nearby,” Sanzo replied. “They tried to manipulate Hazel into using the souls of the youkai dead to resurrect human soldiers involved in the fight. He would’ve done it if Gat hadn’t broken his pendant.” 

Goku had a moment of silence, possibly to honor Gat, then said, “Yeah, that was it. There was a girl I liked there. She gave me my first kiss, then went off to die in the fight.”

Hakkai could almost see Sanzo’s struggle: “Goku’s growing up so fast” with “How dare she mess with my monkey?” with “Selfish bitch going off to die and leaving Goku with the aftermath of all that!” with “How deeply are you mourning her?” Even people far more emotionally astute than Sanzo would have difficulties figuring out the best way to answer Goku’s admission. 

After a moment, Sanzo replied, “...are you okay?”

Judging from Goku’s small, fond smile, Sanzo had answered correctly. “Yeah. It hurt, but we all gotta make our own decisions for what we think is worth it and how we’re gonna live our lives, right?”

“...yeah.”

Good. Hakkai wanted Sanzo to see how much Goku had grown and matured in his absence. 

“He’s not going to stop messing with us, is he?” Gojyo asked, already knowing the answer.

“No, and we may intrigue him even more now,” Sanzo replied. “It only makes me even more determined to get to Houtou Castle, stop the resurrection and the Minus Wave, get my master’s sutra, and _end_ Ukoku Sanzo. End him _hard_.”

“After what happened at the village, I decided _I_ wanna go west and stop the revival, not just because you’re going,” Goku said. “Seeing what this powerful asshole does to people just because he’s _bored_ just makes me wanna kick ass even more.”

“Now that we’ve seen our boss enemy’s face, I wanna get more chances to punch it _really_ hard. Or slice him into little cutlets,” Gojyo said. Sanzo probably had Gojyo at “this is the man who created Kami-sama and is responsible for all the death and damage he caused,” let alone the rest of it.

“It turns out that I’m a very vengeful person,” Hakkai said. “I have reasons to go as well.”

“Thank you,” Sanzo replied softly, making Gojyo gape. Perhaps Goku hadn’t been the only one to grow and mature during their time apart.

Hakkai hoped it didn’t mean that Ukoku Sanzo had managed to break him in some way after all.

 

### End


End file.
